PART 1: Quality of Care Measurement
1. What is the importance of determining disease rates and having a comprehensive surveillance program?
2. Why is it important to do surveillance of noninfectious outcomes of care?
3. With respect to the Risk-Adjusted Complication Rates in a Small Rural Hospital case study, why might you expect the complications measure to be higher for the large and/or teaching hospital?
4. What are some plausible explanations for the risk-adjusted complications rates at the Boondocks Hospital? What kinds of action should the hospital take?
5. What are quality indicators? What is total quality management? Why do these concepts matter in a health care setting?
PART 2: Mortality and Risk Adjustment
1. What are the major parts of a mortality rate?
2. What does it mean to compare mortality rates across time, place and person?
3. What are risk-adjusted mortality rates? Standardization of mortality rates?
4. In the case of the State of Pennsylvania, how do the statewide mortality rates compare along each of the three dimensions?
5. What is the expected mortality rate for congestive heart failure for Hospital A?
6. What additional information is necessary to calculate an SMR?
7. Using the State of New York case study, which factors are supposedly related to CABG mortality? Which factors are most strongly related to CABG mortality?
PART 3: Descriptive Epidemiology: Time, Place, Person
1. How do age, race, gender, socioeconomic status associated with disease?
2. What are modifiable risk factors?
3. What is descriptive epidemiology?
4. Relative to the HIV Clinics in Kentucky case study, what criteria should be used to locate a new clinic?
5. Are there other criteria and data not presented in the case study that would help locate a new clinic?
PART 4: Epidemiology and Financial Management
1. Is healthcare deliver reactive or proactive? Explain.
2. What is the role of epidemiology in finance?
3. What is capitation? In your answer, include the basics as well as risk adjustment.
4. How are capitation rates adjusted?
5. What is pay for performance? Does it work? Why or why not?